Abstract: Current procedures of Federal Recognition—the “legal acknowledgement” of the sovereign and separate political status of tribal nations by the US government—require tribes to document their history, race, culture, and genealogy, and to submit the evidence for review to the Office of Federal Acknowledgement (OFA), where federal agents sit in critical judgment of the petitioning groups’ identity and tribal status. However, many of the types of evidence required and accepted by the OFA as legitimate and official have been destroyed, or removed, or appropriated from these groups; are held, undisclosed, by the very federal agencies that require their production; or were created by non-Indians or the state itself with a clear intent of Indigenous dispossession. This paper argues that evidence, as currently conceived, used, and legitimated by the OFA, perpetuates settler colonial anxieties and practices of exclusion, racism, appropriation and erasure. Rooted in colonial and legal conceptions of evidence, the Federal Recognition policy fails to consider the contexts, temporalities, histories, and cultures of the petitioning tribes. Applying ethnography of the archive/document ethnography, the paper first examines the role(s) that colonial archives play structurally in the Federal Recognition process, particularly in supporting the ways in which settler colonial thinking permeates and predetermines those processes. Secondly, it investigates ways in which archivists could assist tribes in navigating this convoluted and biased process by formulating and legitimizing anticolonial conceptions of evidence that take into account tribal contexts and practices of creation. Finally, it considers how this conceptual, epistemological and practical shift can lead to a more unified effort to decolonize archival praxis within tribal sovereignty claims and purposes.PubDate: 2019-05-16

Abstract: The year of 2017 marked the centennial of Denmark’s sale of the former Danish West Indies to the United States of America, today the US Virgin Islands (USVI). The colonial archives figured prominently during the year-long commemorations in Denmark, as the Danish National Archives digitized and publicly released the colonial records of the islands of St. Croix, St. Thomas and St. John. Drawing on cultural theories as well as debates in archival science, this article proposes the notion of ‘archival encounter’ to centre the ethical-epistemological challenges of digitization and to emphasize the intersected problematics raised by the encounter between the colonial, the archival and the digital. The article begins by revisiting the history of these archives in order to situate the digitization of these records within debates on provenance, custody and access. It then introduces some of the debates taking place within the field of Atlantic slavery, as well as feminist and critical race theories, to argue that the digitization of the USVI records recasts questions about the limitations and possibilities of colonial archives. Furthermore, the article contends that digitality and datafication are indebted to colonial histories of quantification that structure the technological encounter with the colonial archive. Finally, the article builds on these theorizations to amplify recent calls for a feminist ethics of care in archival praxis. Drawing on postcolonial critiques, the article problematizes and situates the notion of care within the colonial and non-innocent histories in which it is embedded, in order to align ethics of care with a critical reorientation of digital colonial archives. Marshalling a postcolonial feminist critique of care as a framework for thinking, the article suggests, can help us to realign archival encounters in ways that that more pointedly confront the colonial legacies of our present.PubDate: 2019-05-16

Abstract: This article discusses issues around the display and use of historical language now considered offensive. Taking as a starting point the non-neutrality of archives, archival systems and documentation, it considers the role of archivists in upholding and reproducing dominant power structures through archival description. It also examines the implications of the uncritical reproduction of historical language in archival description, catalogues and finding aids. It considers the balancing act between reproducing this language and potentially causing offence and distress, and not providing full and accurate information if it is not displayed. While much has been written previously about these issues, there are fewer links to practical actions which may be taken to mitigate these issues. Therefore, a case study is presented using the Language Policy developed by the Find & Connect web resource in Australia, to consider how archives and archivists can be more transparent in their archival description practices. It discusses the development and content of the policy, implications for work on the web resource, and public reception to the policy.PubDate: 2019-05-15

Abstract: This article explores epistemological bases for debates over the nature of archival research and practice, and argues that the lens of historical epistemology helps us best understand the critiques of the so-called “archival turn” as well as continued interest in archives among the public. Close reading of the rise of “scientific” history in the nineteenth century and modern archival practice, as articulated in early twentieth-century archival manuals, offers a new theorization of principles like provenance, respect des fonds, and custody, as well as historians’ “archive stories,” as part of an overarching though usually unspoken epistemology of archives rooted in intellectual project of the German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey to create an epistemological foundation of the human sciences. Following this line of inquiry, it suggests that we can reconceptualize the rise of archival research, the development of the modern archival profession, and the critiques of these trends through the so-called “archival turn” and the post-custodial era of archival practice as shifts that were not just methodological in character but also epistemological. Ultimately, approaching the history of archives through the framework of epistemology helps us make sense of new critiques and continued interest in archives. Despite a growing chorus of acknowledgement of archives’ constructed nature, the instinct that documents provide access to the past with some kind of evidentiary value leads toward the value imbued into archives by professionals and the public alike and their continual contestation.PubDate: 2019-05-10

Abstract: As the European powers appeared to withdraw from their colonies, they often took with them records that were subsequently claimed by the governments of the newly independent countries. These records are post-colonial examples of displaced archives. In recent history, the problem of displaced archives has been approached as a legal problem, and this has produced relatively few resolutions to archival claims. This article approaches displaced archives from a new perspective, applying theories and concepts recently introduced into archival theory by Michelle Caswell, Anne Gilliland and Marika Cifor: affect, imagined records and impossible archival imaginaries, and radical empathy. This article will show that these concepts, which have been deployed to decolonise diverse aspects of archival work, could also help resolve a persistent international problem, which is both technical and geopolitical/diplomatic. This article will argue that archival theory, as recently influenced by Caswell, Gilliland and Cifor, demands a significantly changed approach to archival displacement, even as it sometimes arrives at established positions on repatriation and access. This change involves opening up dialogues about displaced archives to considerations beyond the juridical or geopolitical, to form richer understandings of archival displacement and its effects on individuals and communities. The article challenges individual archivists to apply the concepts of affect, imagined records and impossible archival imaginaries, and radical empathy in their work with colonial records as a component of decolonial archival praxis, and finally proposes a critical theorisation of displaced archives.PubDate: 2019-05-09

Abstract: This paper examines how the African diasporic dance works of anthropologist, dancer, and choreographer Katherine Dunham has endured over time through both archival intervention and through Dunham’s dance pedagogy, the Dunham Technique. Interrogating the ways that dance and gesture are rendered readable through visual literacies, the paper explores codification and transmission as apparatus for ensuring the continuation of culturally informed movement such as the Dunham Technique. The author argues that reading gesture as a document or as a record functions as a decolonial archival praxis, opening archives to modes of cultural expression that might otherwise be rendered invisible by extant western archival practices. The gestural document is conceptualized as a codified, culturally informed, and embodied record capable of being engaged at the archival threshold. The author also argues that gestural documents are capable of capturing and preserving cultural context as well as bringing into the present more robust and culturally informed readings of the past, generating conditions of possibility for remediating anti-Blackness in the archives.PubDate: 2019-05-06

Abstract: This paper describes and analyses the campaign by the Care Leaver community and other stakeholders to bring about a royal commission into child abuse in Australia. Care Leavers did not get the royal commission they wanted and expected—other more powerful forces were at play—but the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (Royal Commission) was highly effective in exposing the complex nature and extent of the problem of child sexual abuse, “the core transgression of childhood innocence”. This paper aims to show that, although the Royal Commission disappointed many Care Leavers with its narrow focus on sexual abuse, when it eventually reported on records and recordkeeping, the Commission surprised many by moving beyond its narrow remit. Issues relating to records and recordkeeping were not originally a prominent part of the Commission’s mandate, but they emerged as one of the crucial issues that influence the quality of the out-of-home Care experience and child protection. This finding has created a fresh context in which Care Leaver advocates, academics and other professionals can work together to further a new agenda for recordkeeping in out-of-home Care.PubDate: 2019-04-16

Authors:Gustavo TanusAbstract: Unpacking the boxes of the poet Adão Ventura demanded reflection on the files, to interpret the displacement of the poet’s archive. It focuses specifically on how minorities are placed within “totalizing” narratives (that archives generally represent or reinforce), and the need to challenge and dismantle such narratives. The Foucauldian and Derridian notions of archive allowed us to discuss the uses of archives by modernity; transit through forms of archiving of minorities; and, finally, to interpret, surpassing what the archives conserve, going toward what they do not record.PubDate: 2019-02-12DOI: 10.1007/s10502-019-09303-1

Authors:Ana Roeschley; Jeonghyun KimAbstract: Our research aims to explore the personal contexts of community-based participatory archive contributors by unveiling the stories behind the objects the contributors donate to the archives. These stories are historical and valuable in intent because they provide rich evidence about and insights into the past from the perspective of the community members. Using the Mass. Memories Road Show as a case study, we analyzed interviews with individuals who contributed photographs that provide a snapshot of their community to the community-based participatory archives. We employed a grounded theory approach to categorize the photographs contributed and identify themes from the memories and sentiments evoked from the stories behind the photographs. The results of this study demonstrate how people perceive and appraise their past life memories and how their surrounding community influences the formation of community-based participatory archives. This study sheds light on how individuals make connections to their communities through their personal objects and stories.PubDate: 2019-02-07DOI: 10.1007/s10502-019-09302-2

Authors:Viviane Frings-HessamiAbstract: The Khmer Rouge archives that are now held by the Documentation Center of Cambodia in Phnom Penh are not the same archives as the ones that were built up during the Khmer Rouge regime. The largest archive, the archive of the Tuol Sleng incarceration centre, comprises records that were found in several places and brought together in one archive. In the upheaval of the first months following the breakdown of the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979, many records were lost, stolen, misappropriated or destroyed. During the 1980s, the remaining records were kept in poor conditions and remained uncatalogued. Some records known to have been in the archive in 1979 later disappeared, and some records were later added to the archive. By retracing the history of the Tuol Sleng Archive and looking through a Records Continuum lens at the archival processes that were applied when the archive was appropriated by the successor government and reconstructed into an archive that supported their political aims, this paper uncovers some problems that have affected the way the records were managed, which have serious implications for the reuse of the records as instruments of evidence, accountability and memory. The author argues that the work that was done on the archive by foreign organisations amounted to a neo-colonial exploitation of the archive. She concludes that there is a clear need to rethink the way the records are accessed and used and she advocates for an archival system based on Cambodian values and ethics that takes into account the rights of the subjects of the records and of their communities.PubDate: 2019-01-31DOI: 10.1007/s10502-019-09301-3

Authors:Belinda BattleyAbstract: This paper considers place as a constitutive co-ingredient of records, of community recordkeeping systems and of community collective memory. In light of new understanding of the essential place of “place” in all elements of archival and recordkeeping processes, the impact of removal of records from within communities is discussed in terms of its potential for damage both to the community and the records. The significance of place to records and community memory highlights the importance of incorporating “place” as an element in archival and recordkeeping models, to make sure that it is taken into account when developing systems and carrying out processes. It also highlights the importance of ensuring that community records continue to be maintained in places of belonging for the community.PubDate: 2019-01-22DOI: 10.1007/s10502-019-09300-4

Authors:Steve WrightAbstract: This article examines the document work involved in a workers’ enquiry conducted at the FIAT plant in Turin at the beginning of the 1960s. The study in question soon became well known in Italy both as an influential early example of post-war workplace sociological research, and for its unusual conclusions predicting an impending period of heightened industrial conflict at the auto firm. Taking a genre approach, this article attempts an archival excavation of a series of those ‘support documents’ (fieldnotes, interview schedules and transcripts) that were utilised in the original enquiry. Bringing critical attention to bear upon the creation and use of such documents, and charting their relationship to the ways in which the study’s findings were subsequently reported, the article highlights their key, if often undervalued role in the document work bound up with the enquiry itself. In the process, it also raises a number of relevant questions, including the significance of such support documents within the holdings of a community archive itself.PubDate: 2018-10-17DOI: 10.1007/s10502-018-9299-2

Authors:Zhiying Lian; Gillian OliverAbstract: There are three models for community archives in China. The first one is where community archives are kept in government-funded/government-established museums or archives. The second is where community archives are kept by scholarly organizations such as universities. The third involves the community establishing its own archive. This last model is very unusual in China. The PiCun Culture and Art Museum of Migrant Labor (PCMML) provides an example of this model as it is the only independent community archives focusing on migrant workers in China. This paper explores the emergence and development of PCMML, its impact on community members and challenges faced including funding and staffing, but also those unique to China—PCMML is greatly influenced by a range of national and local government policies and regulations. Conclusions are that survival strategies for independent community archives in China are dependent on three dimensions: the community itself, society and the government. Cultural consciousness of the community is the premise for the establishment and sustainability of independent community archives, and independent community archives can be the public space to cultivate cultural consciousness of community members and thus activates community members’ agency to document, preserve and disseminate their own history. At the same time, independent community archives also need to engage with broader society to avoid involution and gain support and understanding. Independent community archives are constrained by government policies and regulations, so it is essential for them to develop strategic relationships with government.PubDate: 2018-10-12DOI: 10.1007/s10502-018-9297-4

Authors:Eric KetelaarAbstract: While sitting in their comptoir (office), merchants in early modern Holland were able to manage their plantations in the West Indies or, nearby, their seigniories in the Netherlands because they could make use of records spanning space and time. The merchants knew that information was not only instrumental in running their own business, but was also effective on a larger scale in exercising knowledge, control, and power. The performative power of records—that they may make, and in fact do make a difference in status before and after—was used in the management at a distance. From the seventeenth century, women became involved in business. They got access to the office where records supported business outside the home, but as part of everyday life.PubDate: 2018-10-10DOI: 10.1007/s10502-018-9298-3

Authors:Dariusz MagierAbstract: The communist party had a developed organisational structure which consisted of numerous elements forming a system of mutual dependencies and a very unique office personnel who was in charge of managing the said system. The aim of the article is to describe the system of recording and the flow of information in local structures of communist party in Poland between 1975 and 1989 which were formed from provincial party organisation, meaning provincial party committees and all their subordinate committees and lower-level organisations. It was an enormous bureaucratic system which, in bigger provinces, could be made up from even a few thousand of activists, some involved more, some less in shaping the life of the society, distributing information and producing documentation about the party functioning.PubDate: 2018-09-17DOI: 10.1007/s10502-018-9296-5

Authors:Francis Garaba; Ziphokazi MahlaselaAbstract: University records constitute an integral element of an academic institution’s corporate memory. This business information needs to be well managed throughout its life cycle for the purpose of accountability, transparency, good governance and for reference purposes. This paper reports on a qualitative study that was undertaken at the University of Fort Hare in South Africa by examining an exhibition developed to mark the institution’s centenary. The purpose of the study was to evaluate and trace the provenance of the collections on display to gain an overall assessment of the extent of archival development at the UFH. It cannot be over-emphasized that organizations often struggle to write their centenary history due to lack of supporting documentation as the information is either incomplete, missing or misfiled, rendering it unusable. One of the key findings emanating from this study was that much of the material used for the displays is copyrighted to sister heritage institutions and private individuals, demonstrating the consequences of lack of development and preservation by the UFH of its own archives. Consequently, the need to revamp the institution’s records and archives management systems is mandatory. An encouraging development is that in 2018 there are plans to appoint a records manager, an institutional archivist and a manager of student records. The centenary exhibition has therefore been an opportunity to demonstrate the value of archives to the University of Fort Hare.PubDate: 2018-08-02DOI: 10.1007/s10502-018-9294-7

Authors:Jennifer Douglas; Allison MillsAbstract: This article seeks to center the personal in archives, both theoretically and methodologically. After briefly reviewing how personal archives have been sidelined in archival theory and education programs, we suggest that whether a record is considered personal or not is best determined not based on who created it but rather on how it is activated. In two separate autoethnographic case studies, the authors activate institutional records that, for each of them, are intensely personal. In doing so, they demonstrate how centering the personal in this way might inform and impact archivists’ understanding of their responsibilities to those who create, are captured in and consult the records in our care.PubDate: 2018-07-30DOI: 10.1007/s10502-018-9295-6

Authors:Sumayya AhmedAbstract: The turn to oral history in Qatar and the Arabian (also known as Persian) Gulf is not a rejection of traditional archival authority as has been the case in other parts of the world. In the Gulf, oral history has been embraced out of a desire to fill the silences of the largely unwritten record attributable to previous low levels of literacy and strong oral traditions in the region. Today, oral history is seen as the best method to capture details about traditional ways of life during the pre-oil era. After discussing archival concerns about the evidentiary nature of oral histories, this paper explores how it has come to be a crucial documentation tool in the Gulf, adapted to the specific nation building and cultural heritage priorities of the region.PubDate: 2018-07-11DOI: 10.1007/s10502-018-9293-8

Authors:Michael KarabinosAbstract: This article offers a test of the records continuum model. As a case study I use the Foreign and Commonwealth Office “Migrated Archives”, those records first made known to the public in 2011 during the court case against the British government. Through this case, records from over 30 former colonies were found to have been stored away by the FCO, since the colonies had become independent. While testing the continuum model with this case, I simultaneously use the records continuum model to tell the history of the Migrated Archives. My research finds that by highlighting the hidden moments—the shadows of the continuum—the Migrated Archives reveals that the continuum model can be too dependent on pluralization and a culture of openness and accessibility. Using the term “shadow continuum,” I attempt to rectify this situation by allowing for continuum model processes to continue, albeit in the shadows.PubDate: 2018-07-05DOI: 10.1007/s10502-018-9292-9